Visegrad

The next weekend we made a day trip to Visegrad, a town one hour north of Budapest.


On the train to Visegrad.

Visegrad castle across the river.


On the ferry to the castle.

King Matyas Palace.

Hilary and I sitting at King Matyas Palace ruins.

Me in front of the famous restored fountain in the palace.

Climbing up the hill to the castle. It was like this the whole way, and looking at the picture of the hill a couple of pictures up you can see that it was not a short climb. Every castle has to be on a hill...... :)

Once we got to the top, the view was so amazing.
Eline and Linda had already been in the castle and they said it was just like every other castle so we decided to hike in the hills instead. It worked out pretty well because I ended up going to the castle with my parents the next weekend.

Hilary and I hiking. Yes mom, I voluntarily went hiking.

When we got to the other side of the hill, there was this really cool toboggan thing on a track. You could control your speed, so we rode that. It went really fast.
Us standing at the top of the ski hill, which we proceeded to walk down...it was really steep.

Pecs

On April 5, some of my friends and I went to Pecs over night. Pecs (pronounced like "page") is a town in Southern Hungary. Has has been selected to be the European Capital of Culture in 2010. I really liked this trip because we only went with 8 people instead of 15, it was a nice change of pace. Also, it was more relaxing than Transylvania and Prague. We just walked around the town a lot and there wasn't as much pressure to see EVERYTHING in a short period of time like our big trips. It was really nice.


Everyone except me and Eline walking into the town.

Eating lunch after our arrival at a little restuarant off the beaten path that we were pretty sure the locals ate.

Guillaume attempting to carry the gigantic backpack which was randomly sitting outside some sports store.


Mausoleum of Zsolny. A man opened a porcelain factory near by and he had some extra money lying around so he built this mausoleum.

Me standing on a post. :)

The old city wall that goes around part of the city.


Everyone in front of the cathedral...and Tuomas standing off to the side.

The cathedral.

Me in front of the cathedral.

Daffodils and the cathedral.

A old mosque in the town square that is now a Catholic church.


Tuomas multitasking by smoking and jumping off the swing.


Achraf jumping off the swing.

George jumping a little further.
Me jumping off the swing....so far I have jumped the furthest.

Darn, Guillaume beat me. :(

The next day we got up to find there was a big bike race in the city.


Along with the bike race was a small festival, we can only assume for the race. We were walking through the festival and some people asked us to be the dragon. I was the tail.

Me as the tail of the dragon.

Transylvania

Transylvania was probably my favorite trip so far. We saw such beautiful scenery. It was so different from any other trip we have taken. We left Thursday night and got back Monday morning.

Hilary, Paoline, Mary, and some random man on the 12 hour train ride to Brasov.
We left for Transylvania at 5 pm on the train and got there at 7 am.

Lorraine, Matyas, Tuomas, Ryan and Dylan playing Uno on the train.



This is the first time we rented cars on a vacation, watch out Matyas is getting behind the wheel!

Our car, Ville, Dylan, me and our driver Tuomas. Don't I look great with my eyes closed?

Some of the mountains we saw on the way to Dracula's castle.



Dracula's Castle.

Me at Dracula's Castle.

Everybody at Dracula's Castle.

Random man from Green Bay that we saw at Dracula's castle!

Everyone at the top of a hill right before our muddy adventures!

Some of the pictures of the view on our driving adventure. Everyone basically just followed Matyas's car on this drive and we were basically almost stuck in the hills over night because it was so muddy but we finally found the main road. It was a really beautiful drive.

Some of the mud we drove through, this isn't even that bad...it got worse because it was downhill.
The hills looked almost purple.

Me and Tuomas in front of our muddy car the morning after the crazy drive through the hills. We are about to go into Rasnov castle.

Rasnov Castle.
Me in front of Rasnov Castle.
Everybody in a cellar of the castle.
Ryan, Gizem, Me, Tuomas, Dylan, and Ville at Rasnov Castle.
View from the top of Rasnov castle.
Inside Rasnov castle.

Me doing archery at Rasnov castle.

Another view from the top of the castle.
The random castle we stopped at on the way to the monastery. No one really knows the name or its significance, there was really nothing in it other than a museum and a restaurant, but it is still the only castle that I saw in Romania with a real moat around it.

After the random castle we drove to a Greek Orthodox monastery at the foot of the mountains. It was so peaceful, a perfect place for a monastery.

The chapel inside the monastery.

Inside the monastery.
Inside the monastery.

Monastery with the mountains in the background.

I would say one of the things a noticed about Romania that was different than Hungary is all the stray dogs on the side of the road. There were so many everywhere!

That night we drove to Sibu. This is the square in Sibu, it had a fountain that you could run through.

The last day we went to the castle in Sinai. It was a really beautiful hour drive through the mountains to get there. Tuomas, Dylan, Ville and I bought a Romanian pop music tape for the drive. It was terrible.
Me in front of the castle.
We actually took a tour of this castle and the tour guide was this really little Romanian guy with a total Napoleon complex. We were in a bit of a hurry because we had to get the cars back in time but this guy basically went through every room and said where everything in the room was from, how much it cost, what it was made of. Then he would look at me and say "look at it, see, see, look at it". All I could do was look and nod. It was really funny.

All the guys sitting waiting for the tour.

Nice picture of the castle with the mountains in the background.

Ryan, Tuomas, and Dylan trying to clean the muddy car for free with the things you use to clean the wind shield. Apparently Tuomas is having a really good time :)

Janne, Ville, and Ryan sitting at the table outside the car wash have a beer after we gave up with the windshield squeegee.

Eating dinner before our train ride home.

On the train ride home we all got beds because we knew we could not handle another 12 hour train ride sitting up in a lighted train car. I actually slept really well and got home just in time for my first class Monday morning!